


Heal Thy Servant

by ninhursag



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 15:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If demons used to be humans whatever made them something else can only be a tragedy</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heal Thy Servant

**Author's Note:**

> This ties into a fic idea I've been kicking around, but am not sure will go anywhere.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural), [sweet bess](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/sweet+bess)  
  
---|---  
  
She is written into the parish records as Elizabeth Stout, daughter of James and Gwen. She's the second born of five children, but her older brother Thomas falls prey to the Sweat before his second birthday. In the end it's only her and the third born, her brother Samuel, who are full grown before they are buried.

Her name is Elizabeth Stout, but no one calls her that. Her name is Bess, the butcher's daughter. Bess, Sam's sister. Bess the blasphemous-- after being chided countless time and twice fined for laughing too loud in church. Bess the clever, of whom Father John despairs. Bess the belle, with black eyes so merry and skin so fair that she weds above her station enough to be called Mistress Bess, the burgher's wife.

In her life Bess takes two blows that break her, but it's not until she's been centuries in the Pit that she finally, fully dies. Black eyed, merry Bess dies screaming, clawing the ground below her as if she could escape. As if there was any escape that isn't death itself. Heaven will not have her.

Ruby doesn't die with Bess. Ruby is born long centuries before then, when Bess is not much past twenty with her infant swaddled in the cradle and her brother's blood running down her hands and wrists. Ruby red, like the jewels on a Lady's necklace. Ruby red where Bess lanced the buboe in his neck, like that's going to kill the poison inside him and make him live.

She has to do it herself-- she's all there is. Everyone is dead, save for the worthless physician who'd stole her last horse and fled yesterday. He'll die too, she's sure of it. There's no fleeing this.

Sam whimpers and writhes under the lance but he doesn't scream. When it's done Bess presses her blood stained hands together and whispers, "Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us." Christ doesn't, nor the angels, nor the saints. Bess' hands are stained ruby red until the blood dries to a dull, filthy brown and flakes. She never gets sick herself. She never so much as coughs.

Ruby is born when Sam dies and Bess doesn't. The birth pangs last through the time when she picks up her whimpering baby, straps him to her back and steps outside of the charnel house she once called home. There are bodies in the streets, still locked into their death frenzies, but there's no one to bury them. Bess might have tried once, might have blessed the dead, but now she just steps over them, trudging through the gray mud and walking.

Ruby takes over when Bess' baby gurgles and dies somewhere on the long road to London, when Bess has no idea how long she's been walking with a dead child on her back. Ruby gets her through. Ruby picks through the bones of the dead, steals their coins and their silk and never sickens as if Lucifer himself blessed her to rob graves.

It's Ruby who meets a demon at a crossroads in London town. She's passing fair and very tall for a woman and she smirks at Ruby in her mud soaked gown and blood soaked hands. The demon's eyes are ruby red. "Dear heart," the demon says and puts her hands on Ruby's cheeks like her long lost mother. "Poor pretty Bess. Not so pretty these days, are you?"

"How do you know me?" Ruby asks, but her voice is dull, careless. She does not flinch from the touch of a hand on her skin. "You're a demon or witch or some other crawling thing, I think."

The demon smiles. "I am all of that," she murmurs, cajoling like a whore at the gates from a sermon. "I am come to offer you much, Bessy Stout. Will you hear it?"

"Will you give me my brother and my baby?" Ruby asks. She looks into this things wide eyes and sees the hell fire crackling. "There's nothing else I'd wish for."

The demon lets her hands fall to her side and throws her head back and laughs. So close she cannot be mistaken for anything natural, even were her eyes not red. Her skin is clean and perfectly clear, inhumanly so, like the finest porcelain off a ship from Constantinople. "Not your husband, then? As you wish! All that and more, Sweet Bess," she promises. "Will you but serve my Master on earth and in hell after."

"My name is Ruby," Ruby says and she's smiling back, lips drawn over teeth. "If your Master will give me what the other has not, I will be glad to serve."

"The deal is done, then!" the demon calls and claps her hands with glee. Before Ruby can say another word, the demon catches her close and wraps her arms tightly around her. Her mouth is warm as hell and soft as sin. Ruby sinks into it, deeper than she's ever gone.

The demon caresses her cheek and whispers into her mouth, "So. No wonder you don't wish for your husband back, mm?" she croons. "I think you'll enjoy serving me, Ruby."

When Ruby opens her eyes, the demon is gone.

For a long time after, a long, long time, Ruby is the wicked the one, the one who lives outside of the eyes of God and the Church. Ruby is sin personified. Ruby is a demon. Ruby remembers long after there is no Elizabeth Stout outside of a fragile, brittle book in an obscure parish church. Long after the book itself crumbles to dust. Ruby remembers pretty, witty Bess and her beautiful brother.

When she meets Sam Winchester in a crumbling dark building that's about to become yet another charnel house, Ruby is ready.


End file.
